


Things That Go Bump ...

by mad_martha



Series: The Lodger Series [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Drama, Gen, Humour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something goes bump in the night at the Neverland shelter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That Go Bump ...

Draco wasn't fond of Hallowe'en as a festival, so when he realised it was going to fall on a Saturday that year, he promptly used a little blackmail (in the form of a reminder of his sex education stint earlier during the previous term) and managed to get out of being on duty that weekend.  Instead he Floo'd himself back to Phoenix Lodge on the Friday evening, with a bottle of wine, in anticipation of spending the festival tucked up in front of the fire with Harry.

Best laid plans, the saying went, gan aft agley.  Or words to that effect.  Draco walked into the kitchen of the Lodge to find Harry standing at the table with his arm elbow-deep inside a pumpkin.  Another five of assorted sizes were awaiting his ministrations at the end of the table.

"Please tell me you aren't holding a Hallowe'en party," he said, staring at the orange vegetables in dismay.  "I got the weekend off to escape this sort of thing."

"Sorry," Harry replied, scooping vigorously.  "Hallowe'en party at the shelter tomorrow night.  I drew pumpkin lanterns and gingerbread biscuits.  And if you think this is bad, spare a thought for Karen - she has to make a vat of soup."

"I picked the wrong weekend to come home," Draco grumbled.  But he put the wine in the pantry and rolled up his sleeves.  "Pass me a knife.  Is she making pumpkin soup?  Because you're going to have enough pumpkin here for it."

"No - just tomato, with novelty noodle shapes.  You can buy cans of it from the supermarket, but she'll probably have to empty a whole shelf to make enough."  Harry paused to scoop a handful of pumpkin innards into a bucket.  He grimaced.  "I'm not keen on pumpkin soup anyway.  This'll have to go on the compost heap."

"Juice the flesh and take it to the party," Draco suggested.

"Muggle kids don't drink pumpkin juice."

"They'll never know if you half and half it with orange juice."

"I should call you Delia," Harry remarked, grinning at him.

"Eh?"

"Never mind."  Harry pushed his pumpkin towards Draco.  "Do the face on this, would you?  You're more artistic than me."

"At last - recognition of my talents."  But Draco pulled out his wand.  "Only a fool uses a knife for a job like this."

"You cheater!"

 

*

 

Saturday morning filled the house with the enticing smell of gingerbread as Harry baked great trays full of biscuits in a variety of shapes.  Draco got his hands slapped more than once for trying to steal both the dough and the finished biscuits, and in the end Harry put him in charge of the icing gun to keep him occupied.

"You haven't yet explained to me why you're pandering to this so-called celebration," Draco remarked, as he carefully added orange icing faces to a row of gingerbread pumpkins.

"What do you mean?"

"It's a Muggle thing, Potter - a yearly orgy of aggression and prejudice against the magical world.  Why are you validating it by joining in?"

There was a long silence; so long that he looked up and saw Harry staring at him like he'd grown an extra head.

"What?"

"You're kidding me, right?" Harry said.  "I mean, wizards celebrate Hallowe'en.  There's a party at Hogwarts every year."

"Little though they may remember it, what the little barbarians are celebrating is _Samhain_ , a perfectly respectable wizard festival marking the closing of the harvest and remembrance of the dead.  Unlike Muggles, who surround themselves with fake talismans against magic and magical creatures, and mock us by dressing up - "

"This is a pureblood thing, isn't it?" Harry interrupted him, beginning to grin.  "Another of your parents' odd little bits of anti-Muggle propaganda."

"Why is everything I say on the subject of Muggles assumed to be pureblood lunacy?" Draco demanded.  The icing gun slipped and one gingerbread pumpkin got a very lazy eye.  "I think it's a perfectly valid observation.  In my grandfather's day, Hogwarts didn't hold Muggle-aping parties with pumpkins and ghosts and goodness knows what else.  It was a proper feast celebrating a proper wizard festival, but since all the Muggleborns started flooding in under Dumbledore's headmastery, it's changed to this shallow copy of a Muggle event that has no respect for wizard traditions whatsoever!"

"I seem to remember you enjoying the Hallowe'en feast," Harry said dryly.

"Of course I did, Potter, I was a child."

"Which is the point, you know.  Hallowe'en isn't an opportunity for Muggles to bash us, you prat - most Muggles don't even believe we exist.  It's one evening out of the year when the kids can dress up like ghoulies and ghosties and vampires and Gods knows what else, and have a rip-roaring time knocking on people's doors and demanding sweets.  It's a laugh, that's all, a bit of fun to get them through the dark months of the year before Christmas."

"The little monsters aren't going to be banging on the door here, are they?" Draco demanded indignantly.

"Won't matter if they do - we'll be at the shelter.  By the way, it's a fancy-dress party.  What are you going to wear as a costume?"

Draco looked appalled.  "Who said anything about _me_ going?"

Harry raised a brow.  "It's that, or stay at home and deal with the trick-or-treaters banging on the front door every fifteen minutes."

"Can I hex them?"

"No, they're Muggle children!"

"I should have stayed at the school," Draco grumbled.

 

*

 

"Most of my decent clothes are up at the school," Draco remarked as he dug through the wardrobe in their bedroom later.  "Do you have anything I can borrow?"

"Help yourself," Harry called from the bathroom.

"What are you planning to wear?"

There was a pause, then Harry appeared in the doorway, half-shaved and looking sheepish. 

"Well … actually I wasn't planning on dressing up."

"Ha!  I knew it!  The famous Gryffindor courage falls at the first hurdle."

"I'm not good with costumes," Harry muttered, disappearing back into the bathroom.

"If I have to dress up, so do you."  Draco pulled out an unexpected bundle of red and gold cloth from the back of the wardrobe and held it up.  "Now there's a thought: I could go as a Gryffindor Quidditch captain - "

"No!"

"Why not?  It's not like they'll understand the significance."  He sighed and put the robe back.  "But you know best ….  What about this?  I always look my best in white, I have to say - good lord, it's enormous!"

"What have you found now?"  Harry reappeared, patting his face with a towel.  "Good God, where did you find that?  That's one of my cousin Dudley's old sweaters - I didn't think I had any of them left."

"Why on earth would he wear a knitted tent?" Draco demanded, holding the sweater up to himself.  It reached to his knees.  "Was he half gorilla?"

"Quite possibly," Harry said, amused.  "Here, give it to me - you can't wear that.  It looks like one of his school cricket jerseys."

"Cricket?"

"It's a sport - you lived among Muggles for a while, how did you miss cricket?"

"I suffered through the soccer mania, that was bad enough.  No, wait!  I can use that!"

"That depends on whether you want to look like a hand-knitted ghost," Harry said, but he let Draco have the sweater.  "It'll look ragged enough, at least.  Remember that we can't look too fancy - most of the kids live below the poverty line."

Draco tapped the sweater with his wand and it shrank. 

"That's more the thing," he said approvingly.  "Don't worry, Harry, I'll look suitably poor.  I've a pair of old jeans that are nearly white - I'll be the most ragged angel imaginable."

"Angel?"  Harry stared and shook his head.  "Wait - I don't want to know."

"Yes, you do.  Put those black jeans and black t-shirt of yours on."

"Why?"

"Because you'll make a lovely little devil counterpart for me."

"Why do I have to be the devil?" Harry demanded indignantly.  "Why can't _I_ be the angel?"

"Because you're not blond, blue-eyed and angelic," Draco replied blithely as he pulled his worn old jeans out of the closet.  "Get dressed, Harry!"

"You're not blue-eyed either," Harry grumbled, but he did as he was told.  "Just be careful that your halo doesn't look too convincing … not that there's much chance of that!"

"Bitterness ill becomes you."

Draco pulled his jeans and the sweater on, gave his hair a quick brush and picked up his wand.  Harry was still reluctantly pulling his black t-shirt on.

"Hurry up, Harry!" 

Pushing him away from the long mirror behind the wardrobe door, Draco tapped his own head with his wand and a dinky little gilt-wire halo appeared.  Another tap and a pair of small, rather ruffled-looking wings appeared between his shoulders. 

"What do you think?" he said, turning to face Harry.

The dark-haired wizard looked at him and reluctantly grinned.  "You look like an angel who's been on a bender in Knockturn Alley!"

"And who's to say that isn't how I intended to look?  Come here …."

Draco tapped Harry's head, making a pair of slightly plastic-looking red horns sprout just above his hairline; a second tap of the wand and a long, red, pointed tail snaked out of the back of his jeans.

"And you look like the devil who took me on the bender in the first place," he said.

"Good thing Ron can't see us!"  Harry poked his horns with a cautious finger, but they were quite secure.  "I must make time to pop in and see him later - he's looking after the twins tonight, while Hermione goes to the office party."

"So while the mouse is at home minding the kittens, the cat's out living it up?  He should have a little more sense!"

"Don't you dare start winding him up about Hermione having an office fling!  He's sensitive enough about being a stay-at-home dad as it is."

"I'm not surprised!" Draco said scornfully.

He was of the same opinion as Ron's brother Fred - that babysitting was no job for a man.  Harry guessed that this was another pureblood thing, but he had no patience for it.  He would tolerate a lot of idiot ideas about proper wizard deportment but he wouldn't allow his friend to be teased for being more enlightened than his peers.

In the kitchen, Harry put aside a parcel of gingerbread biscuits for Ron and his godsons; the rest he gathered up into a large basket which he handed to Draco to carry, while he hefted a net full of pumpkin lanterns.

"Ready?" he asked his partner.  "Let's go then …."

 

*

 

The Neverland shelter was on a tight budget, so the party preparations were cheap and cheerful at best.  The staff had worked hard to produce long strings of hand-made paper decorations and someone had dyed several old sheets black to make drapes for the ceilings and walls.  The snooker table had been temporarily moved out of the games room and a trestle table set up at the back to hold the snacks and drinks, and one of the staff had brought a big stereo and speakers and set them up in the corner.  A little bit of jigging with the lighting and it looked quite good.

The only person in real distress was Karen, who couldn't work out how to heat up a couple of gallons of tomato soup in one go, let alone _keep_ it hot, in their rather inadequate kitchen facilities.  This was one of those occasions when Harry really wished there was a way to use his magic without breaching any wizard regulations or panicking the Muggles.  A simple heating charm would have done the trick.  But his colleagues were more resourceful than that.  Tim, the volunteer who arranged sports activities, produced a camping stove and someone else dashed off to borrow a giant jam-saucepan from their mother-in-law.  The soup was heated in four pint lots in the shelter's microwave and poured into the pan sitting over the camping stove to keep warm.

"Really quite creative," Draco remarked to Harry in reluctant admiration.

Then the kids began to arrive, Tharik and his gang in the lead as usual.  Sally, Neverland's director, got the music started, and the party creaked into a slow start.  Not everyone was in costume, but enough of the kids turned up with a pair of fangs or wearing an old sheet to show that they had at least tried.  As Harry had noted, they were all from families at the very bottom of the financial scale; for a frightening number this Hallowe'en supper would be the only 'proper' meal they'd had all day. 

Others were dressed in more elaborate costumes or fancier clothes that could only have been bought with the proceeds from illegal activities.  Harry watched with some sadness as a very hyper group of girls tumbled through the door.  They were regular attendees at Judith's STD clinic; all of them were prostitutes and none of them were older than sixteen.  Most of them had drug habits as well, although any attempt to use or peddle drugs on the Neverland premises would result in an instant ban, and they knew it.  But they came at least twice a week anyway, for free food, condoms, needles, advice … comfort and friendship.

There was no judgement at Neverland.  That wasn't what the shelter was there for.

With an hour the shelter was packed to bursting point and Harry began to wonder if they were breaching the regulations on numbers allowed inside the building.  There were a lot of kids present who definitely weren't regulars, as well, which was an uneasy situation for the organisers; it was strange kids who tended to cause trouble.

Draco had gamely been helping to hand out snacks; Harry caught his arm as he pushed his way towards the kitchen.

"How's it going?"

"Those ridiculous cardboard bowls we're serving the soup in started to leak," Draco said irritably.  "I managed to distract Karen long enough to put an Impervious Charm on the lot, though, so that's one crisis averted.  We're running out of bread rolls and crisps, though."

"I'll nip out to the corner shop for more," Harry replied.  "Look, will you do me a favour and do a quick check of the fire exits?  There are too many people in here and I don't want a disaster if anything goes wrong."

Draco nodded.  "Let me just dump these plates in the kitchen."

 

*

 

Harry was right to be worried, Draco thought as he made his way back from the kitchen.  He'd never seen the shelter so full, even the previous Christmas, and some of these kids looked more than a mite unreliable - not that he claimed to be a judge of Muggle teenagers, but he was coming to realise that they had more in common with their magical cousins than he'd previously appreciated.  Some of these youngsters could definitely have been sorted into Slytherin.

That said, most of the shelter's volunteers were keeping a fairly good watch over proceedings and there was little chance that the most heinous offence - drug-taking and pushing on the premises - would happen, especially with Tharik's gang on the alert.  That still left a fair spread of mischief for the teenagers to get up to.  Draco chased more than one couple out of dark corners and discouraged them from trying elsewhere by loudly and sarcastically broadcasting their offence to anyone within hearing distance.  He also checked all the fire exits, making sure that fire doors hadn't been opened when they should be kept shut, while ensuring other exits were unblocked in case of emergencies.  He caught one little terror attempting to remove a foam-based extinguisher from the wall and chased him away, then reluctantly braced himself and barged brazenly into the women's toilets.

He expected to find another canoodling couple.  The last thing he expected to see was a circle of five or six teenagers crouched on the floor around a ouija board.

If anyone had told Draco about Muggles using ouija boards, he would have laughed.  It was a rare Muggle who could use any kind of divinatory tool with success, after all.  But this was not an ordinary situation, for tonight was Hallowe'en and, unbeknown to the Muggles, there were two wizards on the premises.

Magic had come to the Neverland shelter, albeit with the best of intentions, and as Draco watched in dismay his mere presence sent the counter on the board wild.  He opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say.  "How dare you raise the dead in a Muggle toilet?" probably wouldn't go down very well, with the culprits _or_ with the Obliviators if they turned up.  Which they very well might.

Then the door behind him opened, letting in a blast of noise and music, and a familiar voice said "Draco, are you all right?"

Harry Potter was one of the most powerful wizards in the western world, even if it never seemed that way to the casual observer, and even if he never used the full extent of his magic.  Under Draco's horrified eyes, the counter on the ouiji board started to move at such speeds that he almost expected to see smoke from its friction against the board.

And just as suddenly it stopped again.

"Did - did anyone manage to write down what it said?" one of the teenagers asked hesitantly into the sudden silence.

No one got a chance to reply, for the board began to rattle against the floor and glow.  The teenagers leapt back, giggling nervously, but the last thing Draco wanted to do was laugh. 

"Oh shit," Harry said, very quietly.  "What do we do now?"

"That rather depends on what comes out, doesn't it?" Draco retorted, equally softly.  He reached into his sleeve.  "How good are your memory charms?"

"Passable …."

"Get ready, because – "

Something exploded from the ouija board with a loud _bang._   The teenagers screamed and scrambled for the door.

"Don't let it out!" Harry yelled, but he was too late.

Draco got a brief, all too familiar glimpse of an orange jacket and belled hat before the thing leapt towards the ceiling with a cackle of insane laughter, blew a raspberry at the retreating kids, and shot out of the door.

"Oh fuck, it's a poltergeist!"

"Grab the board!" Harry gasped before taking off after the Peeves-like creature the teenagers had inadvertently summoned.

There was no way they could possibly cover this incident up, Draco felt sure, and his stomach lurched horribly at the thought of what would happen when the Obliviators arrived, but if they could at least catch the creature and force it back through the board to wherever it had come from ….

He snatched up the ouija board and dashed after Harry.

 

*

 

It wasn't Peeves at least, for Peeves was tied to Hogwarts, but the reflection that this was some other poltergeist was not a comforting one for Harry.  _No_ poltergeist was a good idea in the middle of a Muggle Hallowe'en party.  As to how he was going to deal with this one – well, he hadn't a clue, but that wasn't his biggest concern right now.

Right now, he was more concerned about just _catching_ the thing.

All Harry could do was to follow the trail of wreckage, manic cackling and outraged yells and people were thrown right and left, decorations were ripped down, lights were blasted to bits and random objects were tossed around.  A cluster of strobe lights in the corner of the games room were smashed, causing bangs and a spectacular display of sparks –

\- but curiously no one seemed to panic, and some of the teenagers crammed into the shelter were laughing and cheering as Harry fought his way through them, heart hammering in his chest as he followed the progress of the rampaging little demon with his eyes.  He wondered what on earth they thought it must be.

Then Sally appeared out of the crowd at his side, her beautiful dark eyes snapping with fury.

"Goddamn kids bringing fireworks in here!" she raged over the din of music and revellers.  "If I don't find out who it is in the next five minutes, we're going to have to empty the building!"

Not for the first time, Harry marvelled at the ability of Muggles to rationalise magical events.  Then Karen's pan of soup exploded, followed swiftly by the music centre dying, and he knew the game was up.  Over the cries of alarm and groans of disappointment, he could hear Sally out in the hallway telling everyone to head for the nearest exit in an orderly fashion.

Draco fought his way through against the tide of disappointed teenagers to reach Harry's side. 

"That's done it," he said grimly.  "What do we do now?"

"Keep looking!" Harry said sharply.  "Dammit, we can't just leave it to run amok in here!"

"Harry, the Obliviators and Accidental Magic Reversal Squad will be here any minute – "

"Not on Hallowe'en, they won't!  And that's the only good thing to be said about this – they'll be too busy elsewhere to give us any hassle."

Draco blinked, but accepted this without argument.  "All the same, how on earth are we supposed to look for it with the others hanging around in here?"

"Just tell them we're looking for evidence of fireworks – _shit!_ "

There was a sharp cackle and the poltergeist swooped down upon them, pelting the two of them with handfuls of cake and crisps.  Harry swore, flicking his wand and sending jets of something sticky after it, but it was too fast and was gone, belled hat jingling ominously, out of the door above the heads of some straggling kids and up the stairs.

"When I catch that thing - !"  Harry turned to Draco.  "I'm going after it.  You stay down here, in case it decides to come back down."

"Harry, if it goes up on the roof, don't you dare go after it!"

Harry shot him a quick grin.  "What, you think I have a problem with heights?"

"Harry!"

But the dark-haired wizard was gone.  Grumbling, Draco thrust the ouija board more securely under his arm and went to take up a position in the game-room doorway where he could see if the poltergeist decided to come down again.  After a minute of two Karen came to stand beside him, dabbing at herself distastefully with a paper towel.

"I knew this party was going too well," she said glumly.  "I don't know _what_ that thing was that was blowing around in here – looked like a punctured balloon or something.  Sounded like it too."

Draco couldn't think of something to say to this, so he just nodded.

Karen looked at the board under his arm.  "What have you got there?"

"Ouija board," he said briefly.  "I found some of the brats in the women's toilets with it."

She shook her head and laughed a little.  "Whatever next?  Just as well those things don't work!  The last thing we need right now is a real ghoulie or ghostie running loose around here."

"Isn't it though?" Draco replied weakly.

 

*

 

Harry's first encounter with a poltergeist had been Peeves dropping an armful of walking sticks on the heads of him and the other Gryffindor first years on their first evening at Hogwarts.  It had never occurred to him, during his school years, to wonder about other poltergeists or to question the behaviour of the one he knew.  Peeves as just Peeves.

In fact, Peeves was not a typical poltergeist.  He was centuries old and had been bound to Hogwarts by a Tudor headmaster for reasons that had long since been lost in time, and over the those centuries his behaviour had begun to deviate a little from the poltergeist norm.  It was possible, for example – depending on who you were and what you could offer – to bargain with him.  And he had occasionally been known to grow attached to certain humans, including Professor Dumbledore and Fred and George Weasley.

The typical poltergeist was an altogether less predictable sort of creature, if such a thing was possible.  They were relatively rare, for they were a type of demon and generally speaking lived in another dimension.  They could, however, be summoned and they had a particular affinity for troubled human children and teenagers.  Harry himself had had a couple of close calls, although he hadn't heard about it until after he left school, when a conversation with Remus Lupin had revealed it.

"Your cousin Dudley and his friends went through a phase where they were messing around with tarot cards and ouija boards," he'd told Harry one afternoon.  "We had to Obliviate them and confiscate the things – not because we were afraid they would do anything with them themselves, but if Dudley had taken one home with him ….  Well, you were a wizard and something of a troubled teenager.  Just having a ouija board in the house might have been enough to summon something your aunt and uncle were distinctly less than prepared to deal with."

At the time, Harry couldn't help thinking that a poltergeist in the house was only what his aunt and uncle deserved, but then he'd actually encountered one and changed his mind.  Peeves made mischief for the fun of it.  Wild poltergeists were nothing less than forces of destruction.

Just the thought of what _this_ one could do to the shelter made Harry's blood run cold.  The damage could set them back by months, financially, and there would inevitably be questions and the blame would be thrown on the very kids they were trying to help.  He didn't feel very charitable towards the group whose ouija board had facilitated the poltergeist's arrival, but simple justice made Harry acknowledge that the true blame lay with him and Draco, for had they and their magical auras not been present that evening, the demon could never have escaped in the first place.

The upper storey of the building contained offices, counselling rooms, a sparsely furnished bedroom where anyone on night duty could crash for a few hours, a store room full of spare equipment and other junk, and ….  Harry paused at the head of the stairs, hearing ominous noises coming from the room at the end of the passage, then gripped his wand grimly and headed down there, noting in passing that every door had been thrown open and in many of the rooms there was a lot of damage.

The final room was what Judith and her therapist colleague Martine called the "anger room".  It was soundproofed and full of old pillows and bolsters, and occasionally when some of the troubled teenagers they counselled had more anger in them than they knew how to deal with, they could go to this room and scream and beat the hell out of the bolters without hurting themselves or anyone else.

Needless to say, it was pretty popular … and not just with the kids.

Harry flung open the door and found the room a vortex of flying pillows.  Smiling grimly, he leapt inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

The pillows dropped to the floor and Harry was faced by a tiny man hanging in mid-air.  He looked extraordinarily like Peeves and the only reason Harry didn't make the mistake of thinking he _was_ Peeves was because the Hogwarts poltergeist would have greeted him with his usual string of crude taunts.  This one looked at Harry, wide mouth stretching in an unpleasant leer, and waited.

"I think that's enough, don't you?" Harry told it, bracing himself.  "Time you went back to where you came from."

The poltergeist's response was to let out the most appalling fart the wizard had ever heard _or_ smelled.

"Jesus!" he choked and he pulled the neck of his t-shirt up over his nose and mouth.  "That does it - "

A pillow hit him squarely in the stomach.

 

*

 

When Harry didn't reappear and neither did the poltergeist, Draco began to worry.  He was beginning to run out of excuses for wandering around the ground floor and not getting out of the building with the others, and Karen seemed to think it rather odd of him not to simply put the ouija board in a secure place instead of carrying it around.

Finally, he managed to get out from under her and Sally's eyes for a moment and slipped back up the stairs.

He winced at the damage he found up there, even though he had less idea than idea of the consequences of it.  Poltergeists were revolting little beasts and he couldn't help feeling a little retrospective sympathy for old Argus Filch and his obsession with ridding Hogwarts of Peeves – although even Peeves wasn't this mindlessly destructive.

Then Draco heard the noises coming from the room at the far end of the passage and speeded up.  It sounded like a war was going on; he pulled his wand from his sleeve and burst through the door, only to be brought up short by a cloud of feathers and the most appalling stench.

"Ugh!  What the – "

Something soft and heavy hit him solidly in the middle, knocking him back out of the door and sending his wand and the ouija board flying.  Draco landed painfully on his rear and swore like a sailor.  Tossing aside the pillow that had hit him, he scrambled after his wand.  Something swooped down on him with an evil little crow of laughter; he lunged, just managed to grab the wand before the poltergeist did, and rolled, sending a blast of little darts after the creature. 

They missed, but Harry's jets of sticky-string didn't and the poltergeist was hauled back into the room, cursing.

"Get the board!" Harry cried, struggling with his captive.

Draco tried to leap up, but the floor was covered in linoleum and feathers and he slipped.  He ended up sliding down the passage on his stomach (an unpleasant experience after three cups of lemonade and a handful of salted peanuts at the party) but he skidded to a halt next to the board and snatched it up.  His second attempt at getting to his feet was more successful.

Harry was struggling to hang on to the poltergeist without getting scratched or bitten, and didn't have a hand free to cast a spell on it.  Draco raced into the room, slapped the board down on the floor, and pointed his wand at the creature.

 _"Immobilus!"_

The poltergeist was finally frozen and Harry went limp with relief.  Between the two of them they planted it on top of the board.

"Now what?" Draco panted.

Harry picked up his wand and pointed it at the balefully glaring poltergeist.

 _"Diabolus redere!"_

There was a flash, a rattling of the board – and the poltergeist was gone.  The two of them collapsed back in a heap amongst the ruined pillows and flying feathers.

"Are you okay?" Draco managed to ask presently.

"A bit battered, but … yes.  You?"

"Nothing a strong Digestivus Potion won't cure."

"Are you up to doing more magic?" Harry asked him.

"If I have to – why?"

"Because now we need to repair some of the damage that little swine did and come up with evidence and a good explanation of what happened for Sally and Karen."  Harry dragged himself up onto an elbow.  "By the way, your halo has slipped."

"So has one of your horns," Draco retorted.

They looked at each other and began to laugh.

 

*

 

After all that had happened that evening, it seemed extraordinary to climb out of Ron Weasley's Floo and see from the clock on his kitchen wall that it was still only half past eleven.

Ron himself was sitting by the sitting room fire, dressed in blue pyjamas and a tartan dressing gown, reading a book and looking rather moody.  He glowered when they walked in.

"Happy Hallowe'en," Harry said tiredly and he handed over the parcel of gingerbread pumpkins.  "Hermione not back yet?"

"Not yet."  Ron looked at the two of them and snorted.  "You two look like you've had a fine time!  Some of us spent the evening changing nappies and mopping up baby sick while you were out on the razzle …."

Harry looked at Draco while his friend grumbled on in this vein and they exchanged wry smiles.

"Next year, Weasley," the blond wizard told him, "we'll stay at home by the fire and mind your brats, and you can go over to the shelter Hallowe'en party.  Really, it would be a pleasure – you have no idea."

"I'll remind you that you said that," Ron told him.

Harry grinned.  "Actually, Ron, I think it'll be us reminding you!" 

And he handed him the ouija board.

 **\- The End -**


End file.
